Excerpt above from: Creating The Rest of Your Life – Audio with Werner Erhard

“Here the creator of est and founder of The Hunger Project brings us up to date on his experience with auto racing and much more. In the process he provides many practical insights on how each of us can see ourselves and the world around us in new and different ways. Candid, revealing and brimming with Werner’s special wisdom.”

In the following excerpt from a 1979 People magazine article Erhard says “‘I wanted to organize a high-performance team that could master a complex skill in a very short time with winning results and show that everyone involved makes a big difference, from grease monkeys to spectators.’ Erhard says he considered such adventures as skydiving and karate, but rejected them as not collective enough. ‘Auto racing was perfect!’ he exclaims. ‘I didn’t know the first thing about racing. Whatever we’d achieve, we’d achieve together.’”

Senator Daniel Inouye (1924 – 2012) was a United States Senator from Hawai’i.  He was the second longest serving Senator in United States history, and the Chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations.

Senator Inouye was a recipient of the Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He served as President pro tempore of the Senate, making him third in the presidential line of succession after the Vice President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

He was the first Japanese American to serve in the United States House of Representatives and later the first in the United States Senate. Senator Inouye is the highest ranking Asian American politician in United States history.

He never lost an election in fifty eight years as an elected official.

This interview took place on January 24, 1987 as part of Werner Erhard & Associates’ Saturday Satellite Seminar Series.

ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers “Aftershock” and “The Work of Nations.” His latest, “Beyond Outrage,” is now out in paperback. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause. His new film, “Inequality for All,” is now in theaters.

This interview took place on February 2, 1988.

James Burke (born 22 December 1936) is a British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer, who is known, among other things, for his documentary television series Connections (1978), and for its more philosophically oriented companion series, The Day the Universe Changed (1985), which is about the history of science and technology. The Washington Post called him “one of the most intriguing minds in the Western world”.

This interview by Werner Erhard took place on October 15, 1988.

Alice Lok Cahana (born 1929, in Budapest, Hungary) is an Hungarian Holocaust survivor.  She was a teenage inmate in the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Guben and Bergen-Belsen camps. She is most well known for her writings and abstract paintings about the Holocaust. Much of her work is a tribute to Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved her father during the war.

Cahana is an abstract painter.  In 2006, her piece “No Names” was added to the Vatican Museum’s Collection of Modern Religious Art and since then is on permanent display at the museum in Rome, Italy. Her work appears in multiple prestigious museum collections around the world including Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and The United Stated Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.

This interview took place on August 20, 1988.

 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the leading scorer in the history of the National Basketball Association (NBA). During his career, he was an NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) a record 6 times.  He holds records as a 19-time NBA All-Star, a 15-time All-NBA selection, and an 11-time NBA All-Defensive Team member. A member of six NBA championship teams, Abdul-Jabbar twice was voted NBA Finals MVP. In 1996, he was named one of 50 Greatest Players in NBA History.

At the time of this interview with Werner Erhard on September 24, 1988, as part of the ground breaking Saturday Satellite Seminar Series, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the leading star of the Los Angeles Lakers.  He had just signed a contract through the 1989-1990 season, which made his twentieth year in a sport where few athletes survive beyond four seasons.

Andrew Tobias (born April 20, 1947) is an American journalist, author, and columnist. His main body of work is on investment, but he has also written on politics, insurance, and other topics.[1] Since 1999, he has been the treasurer of the Democratic National Committee.

This interview took place on August 8, 1987.

Mike Wallace (May 9, 1918 – April 7, 2012) was an American journalist, game show host, actor and media personality. He interviewed a wide range of prominent newsmakers during his sixty-year career. He was one of the original correspondents for CBS’ 60 Minutes which debuted in 1968.

One of the rare times that Wallace was interviewed rather than interviewing, this interview took place on March 3, 1988.